1812-1842

TO THE DAUGHTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS,

MY GODDAUGHTER MARY

AND

HER SISTER KATE,

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY THEIR FRIEND,

AND THEIR FATHER'S FRIEND AND EXECUTOR,

JOHN FORSTER.

NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.

SUCH has been the rapidity of the demand for successive impressions of this book, that I have found it impossible, until now, to correct at pages 11, 66, and 76 three errors of statement made in the former editions; and some few other mistakes, not in themselves important, at pages 75, 80, and 81. I take the opportunity of adding, that the mention at p. 62 is not an allusion to the well-known 'Penny' and 'Saturday' magazines, but to weekly periodicals of some years' earlier date resembling them in form. One of them, I have since found from a later mention by Dickens himself, was presumably of a less wholesome and instructive character. 'I used,' he says, 'when I was at school, to 'take in the Terrific Register, making myself unspeakably miserable, and 'frightening my very wits out of my head, for the small charge of a penny 'weekly; which, considering that there was an illustration to every number in which there was always a pool of blood, and at least one body, was cheap.' An obliging correspondent writes to me upon my reference to the Fox-underthe-hill, at pp. 42-3: 'Will you permit me to say, that the house, shut up ' and almost ruinous, is still to be found at the bottom of a curious and most 'precipitous court, the entrance of which is just past Salisbury-street. . . 'It was once, I think, the approach to the halfpenny boats. The house is now shut out from the water-side by the Embankment.'

PALACE GATE HOUSE, KENSINGTON,

23rd December, 1871.

Since the above-mentioned edition went to press, a published letter has rendered necessary a brief additional note to the remarks made at pp. 133-4.

23rd January, 1872.